The Advice Goddess

Bad harem day

I’m 30, and I’ve been married to my sweet, beautiful wife for three years. I am a bartender at a club and have numerous opportunities to cheat dangled in front of me. After coming close on several occasions, I finally told my wife I wasn’t happy, and we separated three months ago as a prelude to divorcing. I moved in with a friend and started taking advantage of my new single life. However, it’s already getting old. I miss my wife and her intelligence and our connection. How do I start the conversation with her about getting back together?

— Screwed Up

After several years of marriage, for a lot of couples, pretty much the only way to have hot sex is to do it under an electric blanket.

Ideally, you could have the security of marriage while continuing to pick up sex snacks at the mall food court of bachelorhood. (In a perfect world, Starbucks would also serve free beer.) But back here in the real world, a monogamous relationship demands trade-offs, and the biggie is giving up hot sex for love and constancy. Even couples who keep having sex almost never have it as hot (or as regularly) as they did at the start. There are just certain elements that can’t be replaced — sexual tension and suspense, for example — once you know for sure that you’ll not only be going home with your date but be waking up to them snoring and drooling on your shoulder for the next 50 years.

Part of the problem is the way we view monogamy — as the inevitable next step after falling in love. It’s just assumed that a couple will be sexually faithful for a lifetime; there’s typically no discussion of how, exactly, they’ll accomplish that or whether they even can. Of course, for many people — women especially — there is no acceptable alternative to monogamy. “Open marriage, honey?” Right. You may as well suggest, “You know, I’m thinking we should spend the rest of the afternoon disemboweling squirrels.”

Also, many people mistakenly believe that a happy and loving marriage is a magical fidelity wand that wards off the temptation to wander. Infidelity researcher Shirley Glass, in “Not ‘Just Friends,’” calls this a “misconception … not supported by any research,” though it is commonly cited on TV and in self-help books as a way to “affair-proof your marriage.” What it can end up being is a way to stick blame on the person who got cheated on, as if their saying “I love you” more fervently or keeping the living room better vacuumed could have kept their spouse’s underwear from ending up on someone else’s spouse’s hotel room floor.

Additionally, some people seem to have a biological and psychological profile that makes them more prone to long for the sexual variety pack. One factor in this is being high in what psychologist Marvin Zuckerman calls “sensation seeking” — craving novel, varied, and intense sensations and experiences and being willing to take risks to get them. Sensation seeking has repeatedly been associated with high testosterone, and men with high testosterone tend to divorce more often and have more sex partners. This isn’t to say these factors are an excuse for cheating. (“Biology made me do it!”) You ultimately have the ability to make choices — difficult as that may be in the moment when you’re feeling very much like a penis-controlled robot.

Sure, you miss your wife now, but if you get her back, will you start pining for the parade of bar floozies? Testosterone does decline significantly with age, as does sensation seeking, so you may find monogamy more doable at 40 than you do at 30. Assuming your wife, like most women, requires monogamy, what you owe her is honesty about the trouble you have with it so she can decide whether she’s willing to put herself in harm’s way. If you do get back together, talk about what you (each) need to do to avoid temptation (like, for you, maybe finding a job where you aren’t surrounded by hot drunk girls flashing you their thong for free drinks).

This level of honesty is likely to bring you both closer and build trust, making your relationship deeper and stronger. You’re ultimately telling your wife that you see there’s a world of women out there but what matters most to you is having her — her beauty, sweetness, and intelligence, and your connection. You now understand that this requires consistent effort. (There’s a reason the saying is “relationships take work” and not “flings are like forced labor.”) You’re committing to doing your part to keep some sparks flying in your marriage — and not by having her find you in bed with another woman and then chase you around with a Taser.

It’s Amy Alkon’s Advice Goddess Radio — “Nerd your way to a better life!” with the best brains in science solving your love, dating sex, and relationship problems. Listen live every Sunday — http://www.blogtalkradio.com/amyalkon/ — 7-8 p.m. PT, 10-11 p.m. ET, or download the podcast at the link. Call-in during the show: 347-326-9761 (NYC area code).